The clearer picture: a rare photograph of
Mick
Farren and his wife Joy.

Photo from The Sunday TimesCulture
Magazine.

Funtopia
comment:

Normally, articles in these pages are reproduced as they
come, without editing or commentary by us. However, the Sunday
Times article by Lynne Truss, reproduced below, prompted us to
supply various annotations. Links are in
the text.

"He is a disgruntled dropout and rebel in search
of a cause, who yearns to be Elvis Presley."

On Mick Farren's website, along with
other recently harvested aperçus, is a simple statement, dated March 2000.
"Why I'm not a huge blockbusting star is a constant puzzlement to me." [see Note 1]In
13 words, it sums up the agony of nonentity that informs all 422 pages of
his colurful autobiography Give the Anarchist a Cigarette. Because -
whisper it - who is Mick Farren? Well, Farren is a self-styled hero of the
British counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, and I bet you've never
heard of him. He had a band called the Social Deviants, and I bet you've
never heard of them, either. Ask your friends. Look him up in reference
books. It's uncanny the way he's never there. [see
Note 2]

Evidently, however, he has been urged for years to write this account
of the London psychedelic scene, and personally I'm glad he has. Give the
Anarchist a Cigarette is clearly the work of a preposterous and rather
infantile ego; you can tell that from the title, with its fantasy of the
firing squad and blindfold. But it is a vivid and well written book about
a period that nobody is writing about any more, and even if the
grandiosity can't be helped, it has the merit of providing laughs.

Farren opens his narrative in 1964, where he is discovered living in
west London in the "House of the Chinese Landlord" - ie cheap rented
accomodation. West London in those days was drab and squalid, he says, "a
lot less colourful than those who never saw it would have us believe". The
only features brightening the monochrome were David Bailey billboard
advertisememnts of Beefeaters ("Drinka Pinta Milka Day") and the odd Wimpy
Bar or Golden Egg. His most evocative descriptions, I now realise, often
involve food. Around the corner in Westbourne Grove was a dismal
American-style 24-hour "automat", where you could get hot chocolate the
colour of boot polish made of "ersatz cocoa, cheap non-dairy creamer and
sand".

Amid this wasteland, the early-years Farren - there is never a sense of
him being actually younger - is a disgruntled droput and rebel in search
of a cause, who yearns to be Elvis Pres;ey but tragically lacks the looks,
charm and musical ability. What he does have is rage and hair. he is
angry, aggressive, and ever so, ever so annoyed, but because he is cagey
about his childhood we can't speculate why. He has "warred" against
authority ever since Mixed Infants; practised "relentless guerilla
warfare" against "teachers, constables, bus inspectors, park attendants".
Well, I did say it was funny. Bathos abounds. At the House of the Chinese
Landlord, Farren defiantly plays his records, even though it is against
house rules. "I half expected threats of eviction, but surprisingly,
nothing happened."

One tends to forget that people were angry in the 1960s, even while
making political gestures against park attendants and being rendered
hopelessly solipstic by drugs. One tends to forget that, before Withnail
and I, a Camberwell Carrot wasn't an affectionate joke, it was great big
bloody Camberwell Carrot that made you go "Wow". This is what makes
Farren's book so valuable; neither disclaiming nor justifying. He looks
back and just vividly recollects - sometimes with humour - his role in the
revolution. When he first encountered the "counterculture", he recognised
his tribe, and that was that. he joined his tribe, criticised it,
subverted it, documented it, went to court in defence of it (obscenity
charge), attempted to lead it, and seemingly never left it. He had brief
affairs with Germaine Greer and Julie Burchill but, to be frank, the drugs
and the rock 'n' roll seems to have meant more to him than the sex.

Now he lives in Los Angeles and writes books; his band still makes
records. And he can evoke a pschedelic party 30 years ago at the virtually
derelict Roundhouse in Chalk Farm as if it were last week.
[See Note 3] "A rickety
scaffolding stage had been erected, and slide and movie projectors threw
film clips and abstract images on plastic sheets hanging on clothes lines.
Today it would all seem tattily pathetic, but right then it was the stuff
of dreams...To one side of the stage, someone had attmepted to recreate a
6ft jelly. The assumption had been that it would stand up on its own,
but...it lay in a multi-gallon glutinous blob-mass on the uneven floor,
and the more extrovert partygoers were already sliding about in it."

There are no photographs in Give the Anarchist a Cigarette. I can think
of three possible explanations for this. First, Farren is ugly (hard to
tell from the murky cover photos). Second, pictures don't exist of places
such as the hippie UFO Club or the editorial office of the International
Times. And third, he would rather not have his stories undermined (or
contradicted) by documentary truth. Whatever the explanation, it leaves
the reader flicking through the pages with a confused expression ("There
must be! There aren't!") and then flicking through them again and again
to make sure.

Perhaps poor Farren has dwelt so long on the capriciousness of fame
that when he finally gets the chance to show off in print, he just can't
do it
[See Note 4].
Oh well. His inadequacies have driven him to write a fabulously
readable and original record of the period. Meanwhile, keep on checking
the reference books. He's got to be in there somewhere.

Excerpt from Anarchist reproduced in the review.

"A lot of nonsense is talked these days about the degeneracy
of the Sixties, but the early hippies readily embraced an eccentric but
nonetheless tireless moralism. Hippies didn't drink, hippies avoided
junk food, hippies sought enlightenment rather than oblivion, and
hippies didn't wear handcuffs to bed. In fact the hippies were bloody
puritan...and frowned on many passionate rituals that were close to my
tainted heart. A relentless mood of sunshine is downright oppressive...I
didn't want to watch the flower children play, finding myself completely
out of place amid such
bliss."

1)
This was a flippant, throwaway remark made by Mick to the authors around
the time Darklost was published. We included it on our
"Thoughts Of Chairman Mick" page (a) because we think Mick
Farren damn well should be a huge blockbusting star (we wouldn't
have bothered with this site otherwise); and (b) because the remark is a
pretty good example of Mick's laconic outsider chutzpah. Farren is fully
cognizant of the fact that he ain't never gonna sell like Stephen King,
or Michael Jackson. Funnily enough, he seems to like it out there
in the badlands. For further insights, see the Erich
Himmelsbach article reproduced from LA Weekly.
We're honoured that Lynne Truss (or her research
minions) checked out Funtopia and thought it was Mick Farren's
website. But it isn't, even though he very kindly includes our
address in his official publications and releases. [Back to
article]

2) Let's see: Days In The Life by Jonathon Green; Playpower
by Richard Neville; England's Dreaming by Jon Savage; Please
Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain; I Knew I Was Right
by Julie Burchill. Plus sundry other
reminiscences, collections and dissertations on the 60s, the Underground Press,
the UK music press, Punk
Rock and rock music in general. [Back to article]

3) Of course, he may have drawn on his own previous
documentation of the Underground scene, notably in Watch Out Kids.
A bit of homework would not have gone amiss - although, to be
fair, Mick's older books are hard to come by.[Back to article]

4) "Finally"??? Mick
Farren's done nothing but show off in print (and on stage and vinyl) since 1967. Long may he continue to do so. [Back
to article]

The last word belongs by right to Mick Farren. When asked what had he done to this reviewer to "rattle her
cage", Mick replied "I never met the damned woman. I hear she
fancies herself as a humorist."